You know what I'm sick and tired of?

[cboy4]

People who think they're medical/psychiatric experts when in fact, the only thing they're experts at is being ignorant.

Tonight, I heard someone on TV say Andrea Yates (the Texas woman who drown her kids in the bath tub) should be in prison or on death row INSTEAD OF being sentenced to a mental hospital because "she knew right from wrong." :wtf:

How the hell does the average citizen know whether she knew right from wrong?? :shrug:

These are the same people who think they know when life begins and want to control what women do with their own bodies.

These are the same people who think they know when someone is alert and wants to live when in fact, they're blind and in a vegetative state of mind as we saw in Florida.

Also, these are the same people who say I chose to be gay, like I woke up some morning and said, gee I think I'll be gay so I can be shunned by society. Good times.

Some people just need to start minding their own F-ing business, ya know? :rant:

[mousie]

1. and they're mostly republicans!!! :)

[sandnsea]

2. I prefer they get a brain

But minding their own business works too.

[Dr.Phool]

3. Why did you decide to be gay?

I got up one morning and decided to be straight.:sarcasm:

I've read a bit about Andrea Yates. Continually pregnant, in abusive fundie marriage, severe post-partum depression. Definitely in need mental help.

[cboy4]

6. Well, there's always tomorrow. Maybe I will be straight...

Yes, you have changed my mind, I have decided to be straight!! Thank god almighty I'm free at last! :woohoo:

[Dr.Phool]

13. Now I'm confused

Maybe tomorrow I'l be bi.

And if that don't work I'll look for one of those human-animal hybrids!

[BushOut06]

14. There you go, tri-sexual

Damn it, those Gophers were right. Gay marriage really IS a slippery slope.

[rateyes]

4. With you...

I was arguing the "gay agenda" (as a freeper on another board put it) with him. Another poster jumped in with a satrical comment saying it goes like something like this:

Mom to 11 yr. old son: Johnny, I want you to know you have a choice between being gay or straight.

Johnny: But, mom, I like girls.

Mom: Yeah, Johnny, but you have a choice, so before you're 12 you need to decide whether you are straight or gay.

He wrote the above to my question of the freeper: "When did you choose to be heterosexual?"

I am straight. My older brother is gay. He was married for 20 years to a wonderful woman...got divorced, came out of the closet to me, first (thinking I would be the least offended...I wasn't offended), but he did "catch hell" from our parents and our brothers. Time is healing things in the family...but, no one chooses. No way.

People need to live and let live.

[BushOut06]

5. I used to be straight, but Brokeback Mountain made me gay

My buddy and I went to see Brokeback Mountain together. We're both straight, married with kids. By the end of the movie, we were doing the nasty with each other in the theater bathroom.

[helderheid]

9. That's why I've avoided the movie!

:sarcasm:

:rofl:

[cboy4]

11. Yes, the theaters were pumping in secret gay mist through

the air conditioning system.

And the popcorn? You guessed correctly....there was gay conversion butter on it. :rofl:

[BushOut06]

12. Damned, I thought that popcorn tasted extra salty

Darnest thing is now I'm addicted to it.

[rateyes]

22. I haven't seen it yet...

my daughter went with some friends..came home saying she cried through it...two days later came and said she cried about it before going to bed. Must be one hell of a movie!

[H2O Man]

7. While I agree with

most of your post, Andrea Yates did make a phone call after killing her children in which she said she had done something wrong. That could be taken by a reasonable person to indicate that she had some sense of "right from wrong." It might also indicate that our legal system could be expanded to include "guilty, but mentally ill." The Yates case is tragic, and it is extremely complex. As terrible as the crime was, it would seem that it might appeal to people's sense of compassion.

[cboy4]

18. Sure, but I think we can all agree that anyone who drowns all of their

children in the tub is having more than just a bad day.

And, maybe you can be mentally ill and still know you're doing something wrong.

My point is that's for the experts to figure out, not us.

[graywarrior]

8. Geraldo already found Entwistle guilty based on his "actions."

[HysteryDiagnosis]

10. The pretzeldent knew right from wrong but he allowed for Iraq

to have the living crap bombed out of it..... and he isn't on death row....

[bleedingheart]

15. because the crime is one that disturbs people more than most...

that is why. It tugs at the heart strings....

It is just a natural human reaction to such a horrific crime. Note, I am not a psychiatrist and I feel that the poor woman was as much a victim as her poor children and I realize too that she may never be "normal".....

But I can understand why people react as they do to the crime, it is hard to imagine that a mother would kill her own children. People also probably feel that as a mother she should have turned herself in or taken her own life rather than killing her children but that is because most of us don't encounter the type of mental illness that can just consume an individual and leave them completely irrational.

I feel more compassion for Andrea Yates because she is mentally ill and had a history of mental illness and yet no one around her did anything to help.

However I have no compassion for that Susan Smith who drowned her two sons in order to be more acceptable to her boyfriend at the time...she pre-meditated that murder and then falsely accused some fictitious characters (african american men if I recall) when in reality she had watched her sons drown....that was cold, callous and she deserves prison.

[cboy4]

19. Yes, I agree with everything you said

I just feel why were mental hospitals established if not for people like this woman who methodically drown her own children in the tub?

Some people obviously feel otherwise and think she should rot in a prison cell.

[sendero]

16. Liver and onions

?

[Mythsaje]

17. I was talking about the gay "choice" with my father some time back

and I asked him..."So when did you wake up and decide you liked girls?"

He thought about it for a minute and said, "I don't think I ever decided anything about it."

"Yeah, I said. Same here. I like girls. So what gives people the idea that it's a choice?"

I think I surprise some people by being so open-minded about the question. My wife and I went to the Pride parade in Seattle last year and, when I told a co-worker about it, she seemed a little shocked. She's a good person, but has been rather sheltered in a lot of ways. Not in ways that would've made HER safer, but ways that kinda kept her from learning about things she should've had the opportunity to discover for herself.

Anyway. She asked me, "what if one of your boys turned out gay? Would you be okay with that?"

I shrugged. "Why not?" I asked her.

Then she asked "What would you say to him if he told you he was gay?"

"Be careful," I replied.

She nodded. She still seemed a little shocked, but starting to get it. I don't consider it a "choice" and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But I know it's not necessarily an easy "lifestyle" and there are a few inherent dangers that are a little more immediate than that of an ordinary heterosexual male. HIV and AIDS, for example.

Not that I wouldn't tell him to use a condom if he told me he was having sex with girls. I'd just weigh the odds of something going wrong a little differently.

Gays don't bother me. Bible thumpers bother me far worse. We were talking about them today... Apparently her father is dating a "very religious" woman right now (her mother died 4 months ago and this is a source of a lot of inner and outer conflict anyway) and the rest of her family is expected to kow-tow to this woman's attitudes. As I pointed out, a lot of the extremely religious types are hiding some pretty twisted shit inside themselves, as if only by being almost obnoxious with their expectations of others can they deal with what resides inside themselves.

Apparently her husband feels the same way about them.

All I have to say is that I'd much rather have a son who was gay than a one who was a bible thumper. Not like the latter is very likely, considering his mother is an eclectic pagan type and I'm...well, whatever the hell I am. Semi-agnostic pantheistic humanist?

They don't live with me, but the last thing anyone's going to get away with is pushing Christianity in their faces. Anyone who tried would be lucky to escape without being flayed alive by their mother, who has one of the sharpest tongues I've ever encountered.

When it comes down to it, I think the main gist of their messiah's message was "don't be an asshole" and "mind your own business."

Not that they're listening to HIM.

[cboy4]

20. Don't be an asshole and mind your own business

would be an excellent bumper sticker ;)

[rucky]

21. Wow. You just made me realize that every wedge issue...

is based on a rejection of science.

I think down the road we'll discover more about the brain chemestry of the criminal and the addict, and be able to address those problems without draconian punishment.

the rest of the issues: abortion, gay rights, right to die, is pretty clear cut, scientifically.

It's time to start holding these kook's beliefs to the same standards that we hold our own beliefs - they're not "equal opinions" in any way.

We don't tell them to "prove it" nearly enough.